250 Miles
983 Total Miles
It was another peaceful night on the road. Long rides followed by big dinners result in serious, uninterrupted sleep.
We hate to bore you with repetition, but once again we began the day with the full American breakfast.
Breakfast AmericanaForified with all the cholesterol that's possible to eat, we sipped coffee and mapped out our day.
As mentioned yesterday, our mission for the day was to give Jim the full cave experience. Knowing that it's the 4th of July, we expected most of Pensylvania's show caves to be closed. Well, profit trumps patrotism any day, even on Independence Day.
We made a few calls and found out that the Lincoln Cave, located only 25 miles from Duncansville, was open for business.
So, we packed up our bikes and headed down Pennsylvania Highway 22.
Major league baseball players, farmers and bikers on a road trip all share a major obsession with the weather. For the ballplayer and farmer it's a prime factor in making a living. For us, it is all about, well, us. We don't like traveling in the rain. We have the gear to do so and we have the experience to ride safely in the rain. It's just no fun. Why do I mention this? Because we traveled the entire day under dark skies. The XM radio weather service we receive on our GPS continually indicated a 90% chance of rain.
Anyway, we set out under a cloud of meteorological paranoia in search of Lincoln Cave.
We arrived in about 30 minutes, bought our tickets and waited for the guided tour, which began about 45 minutes after we arrived.
Our cave guide told us several times not to touch the stalagtites
Jim enjoys his first cave.
Bo in Lincoln CaveIt was a nice little cave. It would be incorrect to say that Jim was overwhelmed with the experience but, nonetheless, he is now a certified caveman.
We left Lincoln Cave and began traveling an eastern route under dark skies through central Pennsylvania. It's a really pretty place. We passed through a procession of small towns and neat little farms.
We stopped in Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, for gas and a soft drink. The soft drink was a Weis White Birch Beer soda, a regional soft drink as important to central Pennsylvanians as a Sun Drop is to middle Tennesseans. It tasted very much like root beer but was just different enough to earn it's own reputation.
White Birch Beer soda. Good stuff.The proprietor proudly listed the famous people who call Beaver Creek home. They include the late Euell Gibbons, of "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" fame and Davy Jones, former front man for the Monkees. We can understand Euell. He was born in Beaver Creek. But Davy Jones is English. We could gain no insight into how he managed to end up in Beaver Creek. We did learn that he currently performs on a number of Caribbean cruise ships.
After leaving Beaver Creek, we headed east on I-80, expecting to spend the night in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. As the clouds continued to darken we drove on. Once in Stroudsburg, we were happy to note that the skies were clearing up and that our day was not yet over. We decided to up the ante a bit and head into New Jersey.
Jim plotting our route through New JerseyWe crossed into the Garden State and turned north. After about an hour in New Jersey with no motels in sight, we arrived in Newton, New Jersey, thinking that we really needed to find lodging for the night. We stopped at a convenince store and questioned the clerk about local accomodations. He pointed us toward a Holiday Inn Express that is so new it is not listed on our two-year-old GPS.
So, we found a good place to stay that had a restaurant next door. The room is new and comfortable and the restaurant was just fine.
Our day was good. We stayed dry, Jim explored a cave and Davy Jones entered our minds for the first time since 1968.
Tomorrow we head into rural New York to explore the Adirondack Mountains. We plan to end the day in position for an easy ride to Manchester, New Hampshire, the day after tomorrow. In Manchester we will meet Bill Thompson and begin the final leg toward Nova Scotia. We're sorry he can't be with us sooner.
